Wednesday, March 12, 2014

FILM FATALE: HOMOSEXUALITY IN BOLLYWOOD / COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU BUSINESSLINE

Headline: STOP WINKING

Salaam: Dedh Ishqiya does not make a
song and dance about its heroines' lesbian relationship

“So Karan Johar is completely out of the closet!” a friend wrote
on Facebook this week. She was referring to an episode of the talk show Koffee
With Karan in which KJo proposed a double date to his guests Anushka Sharma
and Anurag Kashyap: he with Kashyap, Sharma with her boyfriend. Coming out? Not
really. The double date suggestion is just an addition to a long history of gay
jokes, hints and innuendo from and about Bollywood’s
most-famously-assumed-to-be-but-never-officially-confirmed-to-be-homosexual
filmmaker on the television programme he hosts.

Of Mumbai’s many directors who are rumoured to be gay, Johar
alone has fuelled speculation about himself with those never-ending gags on his
show. Many in the LGBT community also see the gay comedy in several of his
films as playing to the gallery in the interests of his bank balance,
contributing to the mockery of an already ridiculed people. Onir — arguably
Bollywood’s only openly gay filmmaker — outrightly condemned Johar when I
interviewed him in 2012 for my book. “It’s absolutely okay not to do films with
gay characters but don’t do the opposite where you harm your own community,” he
said.

The point is no one has a right to demand that Johar publicly
acknowledge his sexual preferences. Coming out is a difficult, intensely personal
decision; maybe he’s not gay, maybe he is, either way it’s not our business.
However, it does impact a serious cause when he joins most of Bollywood in
persistently referring to homosexuality — both off and on screen — with
contempt, clichés, wink-wink-nudge-nudge humour or at best, silence.

Celina Jaitley has been an exceptional, pro-gay voice from
mainstream Bollywood for years now. Shortly after the Supreme Court’s December
2013 ruling upholding the criminalisation of homosexual sex under Section 377
of the Indian Penal Code, Imran Khan starred in a satirical video reviling
prevailing prejudices about homosexuality. Both stars go against their
industry’s long-standing norms, typified by Amitabh Bachchan’s reaction to this
question from a viewer on a television show I hosted just a few years back:
which male star would he like cast opposite him in a remake of Dostana (the
Abhishek Bachchan-John Abraham-starrer about two men pretending to be gay)?
Bachchan Senior passed the question. When Section 377 was incessantly in the
news though in end-2013, he voluntarily — even if ambiguously — addressed the
court ruling on his blog.

If a septuagenarian Bachchan can marginally overcome his unease
with the subject, possibly because of the recent media discussions on gay
rights, then imagine the impact on young film-goers if mainstream Bollywood
were to routinely give us non-stereotypical gay characters with an everydayness
to them — anyone whose homosexuality is neither a cause for mirth nor a major
plot point in the film, but a mere circumstance not meriting comment.

Abhishek Chaubey’s Dedh Ishqiya is a milestone in that
respect. Unlike most mainstream Bollywood productions that serve up homosexuals
who are limp-wristed, lecherous and/or comical men, this film’s same-sex lovers
are not stereotyped and — wonder of wonders! — they are women. Unlike Onir’s
ground-breaking My Brother Nikhil and a segment in his omnibus I Am(both
empathetic gems), Dedh Ishqiyais not an issue-based story with
homosexuality as a central theme either. That Madhuri Dixit and Huma Qureshi
play lesbians is a revelation made in passing in the film, without a snigger or
a snort.

So it turns out the situation is not without hope. Johar himself
directed a restrained even if flawed short feature about a gay man in 2013’s
four-film anthology Bombay Talkies. Now comes news that Ekta Kapoor is
producing a Romeo and Juliet with a gay spin. Back in 2005, Kapoor’s Kyaa
Kool Hai Hum featured Bobby Darling in one of Hindi cinema’s crudest
portrayals ever of an LGBT person. Her new film is a chance to compensate for
that travesty. Question is: does she care enough to want to redeem herself?

About Me

Anna MM Vetticad is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, an overview of the Hindi film industry presented through an account of a year in which she watched every single Bollywood film released in India’s National Capital Region – including ones you might never have heard of. Through 20 years as a journalist, she has worked with India Today, The Indian Express and Headlines Today. At HT she hosted her own interview show Star Trek which drew all India’s eminent entertainment personalities. While Anna has spent most of her career as a behind-the-scenes editorial person, she has also reported on most major Indian entertainment and lifestyle events and several international ones including Cannes and the Oscars, in addition to being the film critic for Headlines Today. She is currently a freelance journalist, social media consultant and teacher. The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic is available on amazon.com (paperback & Kindle version), ebay.in, flipkart.com (paperback & e-book), ombooksinternational.com, infibeam.com, homeshop18.com and dialabook.in among other websites, and in stores across India. Twitter: @annavetticad